“What?”

“It belonged to my grandfather.”

“Griffin Chastain?” Sierra said. “Really? You’re sure of that?”

“I can feel his paranormal signature. Dad must have felt it, too. It isn’t the radio that’s the family heirloom. It’s this relic.”

“So we know it’s valuable but we don’t know what it is.”

“No,” North said. “But I’ll figure it out.”

“Hmm.”

He looked at her. “What?”

“Griffin Chastain was a famous magician, wasn’t he?”

“So?”

Sierra smiled. “It just occurred to me that the rod looks a lot like a magic wand. What do you want to do while we wait for Matt to get back to me?”

“Track down every dealer and collector here in Seattle who might have heard rumors of a recently stolen Bluestone artifact.”

“That will definitely keep us busy for the rest of the day and half the night.”

CHAPTER 10

Gwendolyn waited until the door closed before she came out from behind the counter and walked to the front window of the shop. She watched Chastain and Sierra leave the alley and disappear around the corner.

Satisfied her visitors were gone, she locked the door and started back toward the counter. Midway across the room she stopped to contemplate the vintage camera. She could sense the heavy energy infused into the machine. She knew it was still functional but she could not activate it.

Sierra had definitely sensed the camera’s vibe but it was impossible to tell if she could figure out how to use it.

Gwendolyn went back behind her desk and picked up the old landline phone. When it came to calls to her sister, low-tech was far more secure than high-tech.

Eloisa Swan answered immediately, which indicated she was in her office at the pharmaceutical company where she was employed as a research scientist.

“Someone responded to the camera’s vibe?” she asked.

If she felt free to mention the artifact it meant she was alone.

“A go-between named Sierra Raines,” Gwendolyn said. “She’s handled a couple of deliveries for me lately. I was going to hire her to check out the camera. She just did by accident. She’s good. Smart. Honest. Reliable. I’m sure she detected the energy but I couldn’t tell if she was able to resonate with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t as if I could come right out and ask her. She wasn’t alone. Unfortunately she was here with a new client who happens to be from the Foundation. North Chastain.”

“Shit. You’ve had another visit from someone from the Foundation? That makes, what? Three of them in the past month?”

There was a sharp note in Eloisa’s voice. Gwendolyn understood. She was a little anxious, too. There had been a lot of attention from the Foundation recently. That was not good news.

A couple of weeks earlier Slater Arganbright, one of Victor Arganbright’s many nephews, had arrived in Seattle on the trail of a killer. Gwendolyn had been unnerved when he had walked into her shop accompanied by Catalina Lark from the Lark & LeClair investigation agency. The pair had asked for information regarding a certain hot artifact.